Scientists reveal that music, while being a form of entertainment for most people, is something much more for those who actually play a musical instrument, or who otherwise create music. This is especially true for children who play in school orchestra, bands, or who have been practicing a certain instrument since they were small. A recent study has revealed the fact that this type of training can be used as an indicator for mental abilities later on in life, LiveScience reports. The find was presented at a meeting of acoustics experts, recently held in Austin, Texas.

“We (...) hypothesize that musical training (but not necessarily passive listening to music) affects attention and memory, which provides a mechanism whereby musical training might lead to better learning across a number of domains,” McMaster University Institute for Music and the Mind director Laurel Trainor says. The new study was conducted on preschool children, some of who had taken music lessons while they were small, while the others hadn't. The experts then ran sound recognition tests for all the children, and determined that the ones in the former showed a better brain response to the stimuli than members of the latter.

In other words, the expert says, it would appear that musical training has the ability to physically influence the human brain's auditory cortex, the area where signals coming in from the ears are processed and integrated into our conscious and unconscious minds. The research also revealed that as little as one or two years of musical training are enough to boost memory and attention in those attending it. The ability to inhibit actions is also boosted, and Trainor believes this occurs as people learn to play live music, alongside others on a stage.

The investigations “suggest that a music intervention that strengthens the basic auditory music perception skills of children with dyslexia may also remediate some of their language deficits,” says Gottfried Schlaug, a researchers at the Harvard University. He focuses his studies on the cognitive effects of musical training, and says that the effects of music on learning in the case of dyslexic children are amazing. Tone deafness in individuals was associated with reduced or absent arcuate fasciculus, a portion of the brain that connects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.